Posted
by
CmdrTaco
on Wednesday March 16, 2011 @10:00AM
from the oh-that'll-work-out-fine dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The White House is concerned that 'illegal streaming of content' may not be covered by criminal law, saying 'questions have arisen about whether streaming constitutes the distribution of copyrighted works.' To resolve that ambiguity, it wants a new law to 'clarify that infringement by streaming, or by means of other similar new technology, is a felony in appropriate circumstances'""

I need more people like you. People seem to think that copyright is about "compensating" people or "being fair". The funny thing is that people who claim to be conservative and for small government often seem pro-copyright. Which is bizarre, since it is really one of the first socialist policies enacted by the young US government, along with patents, the postal service, and postal roads. I'm at a loss...:)

Yep, ensuring streaming can be a criminal offense sure is high on the priority list! I'm sure Manning won't mind continuing to be tortured by his own government while this important issue is dealt with. Maybe that's why Crowley was fired by Obama for pointing out the torture - he was getting in the way of dealing with streaming!

I hope every US citizen is as ashamed of your government as I am. Its hypocrisy and blatant selling out to corporations is simply despicable.

Go back to pulling numbers out of your ass. 14 year copyright, 14 year patent, end of story. Even that's too long for most people to benefit... I would agree to a 6 year copyright with three filed extensions: up to 24 years. The first would be a cheap ($100) re-file; the second, moderately expensive ($1000) because if you're not making the cash in 12 years something is wrong. Besides that, you need to file all direct source material: all of the products of labor that went into the final product. This means all computer source code (but not necessarily design documentation), all the master tracks (but not necessarily sheet music, lyrics sheets, etc), computer source document files for books, etc. Where the line is drawn between "creating" and "assembling"... writing words, formatting them, etc, is "creating," while "Converting to PDF, printing," and so on is "assembling."

So if you want that big 18 or 24 year copyright, your software is getting PD'd open source, your master tracks are getting released, your word documents are being handed out, and any in-house proprietary tools you wrote or commissioned that are essential for building your work (remember, running a tool to convert X into Y is not creating, it's assembling) are also getting dumped with them.

Also, a record of all tools needed is included, and who owns the rights; upon filing, these rights holders are contacted for a copy of their tool, if not on file already in another copyright extension. If they don't extend their copyright, then that tool is released; if they do extend their copyright--twice, past the 12 year first extension--then they are also required to release all source material. This is to ensure that such tools are on file, in case someone keeps a "very specialized" piece of software NDA'd and shifted to only a few clients (a couple dozen corporations have it). The software would still go out of copyright in 6 or 12 years, but only a few people would have it to release; those corporations may well not care anymore about that particular iteration of that tool by then, and it may be lost, and incompatible with old work, and now you lose that functionality. So we want it on record: what you used, who owns it, and a copy of it.

Years ago, we said "we're pirating music because they won't let us download it!"And they made download stores.

Then we said "we're pirating music because they won't sell individual tracks!"And they let us buy single tracks.

Then we said "we're pirating music because they add DRM!"And they stopped adding DRM.

Then we said "we're pirating music because 128kbps is crap!"And they gave us 256kbps+ tracks.

Then we said "we're pirating music because the major labels have a monopoly!"And now any indie artist can get on iTunes and other major music stores.

And we still pirate.Because all along, we really just wanted stuff for free.

I'm all for copyright reform, but really: The latest music, movies, and games are not vital liberties, and they take a lot of time and money to make. If someone wanted to give their content away for free, they would have done so. So ask yourself: If a person who made something you want expects compensation, why do you deserve to have it for free?